The Gray Matter Menagerie

Ever had one of those nights when your brain just won't shut up? No, I don't mean the usual day-to-day stuff. I mean an all out, eye-twitcher of an assault on your psyche. For me, one began around 3:00 A.M. (just before Christmas day) during a needed moment of solitude alongside my friend, Jack Daniels, and sitting in my home office. All the necessary chores of the season were done. Another Christmas mission would soon be accomplished, yet things were bad in my life. The worst they'd been in many years. I couldn't focus. During the preceeding weeks most of my spoken sentences began with "Uh..." before being able to formulate words. As I listened to the gentle hum of my central heating system in the background, errant thoughts and uninvited moves began playing in my head. From out of nowhere they began draining me of what little concentration I had left. Weird things. Crazy thoughts. Screaming overhead like B-52 bombers dropping turds of despair and splattering chaos in my once chlorinated pool of order. There was this one flash thought of a guy who looked like a gay car salesman in some abstract commercial for a company that should have been dubbed "Hey, this guy'll be dead soon so lets get ready to grab his shit and run,!" Incorporated. Truth be told, at the time it wasn't too far off the mark.

I was now broke. No real job to speak of. All my clients had bailed on me over the recession. My credit cards were maxed and I hated everything. I hated my life, my cat, my dog, my hair (especially my hair), my pants, my weight, my toes and trees and most people by then. I especially hated anyone that used those politically correct phrases like "green this" or "green that" and people that used the term "think outside of the box", and crap like that. They were phony. Fakesters and hobgoblins the lot. For some weird reason during this fall into my abyss I also recalled how all my voting over the previous twenty years seemed to count for nothing. It would seem nowadays everything is a scam or a scheme. Most people want only to be fluent or expert in "Misdirection 101". It was the beginning of a bad night for me. Negative imagery and pessimism started dripping from my nostrils and oozing from my pores. It all sucked and I was falling fast. I was sinking into a great and ugly depression beyond the realm of anything I'd ever known before. As the darkness fell, so did my desire to live. I began contemplating ending it all. "Suicide?" I thought to myself. "Hmm." My mind flashed pictures of some quick and easy methods but fortunately, I am just a wimp in disguise. I mulled it over between whiskey gulps. My angelic soprano-voiced good conscience chirped in with "The fighter inside says buck up and tolerate everything! Don't hate what you do have! Work for what you don't!" she said. Then the opposing team...."Yeah, everything that is...except the friggin' hair, son!." My dark side always threw that in. "I'd kill myself too if I had your hair! Been tellin' you this for years!" They continued the age old tennis match I had listened to over the years without me as my mind continued along path into the void.

It's a wise old fogey who can take something like hair and see the importance of real-time salvation in it eh?, especially when comparing it to the miseries and complexities of life in todays world. (Or was that the Jack talking?....I dunno...shit!) Anyway, as my daydream deepened and this second group of movies blazed on in my head, a new third "sidebar" came alive in another corner. Just like those fucking TV commercials that run at the bottom of the screen while your favorite show is on. (I hate that too damn it!) But this one....this one was sneakier than ever before. This one thought it was slick. My own brain actually tried to sidestep itself by making "me" think there was some fleeting, haphazard accident of thought that had planted the secret idea within me (without my catching it) and then trying to make me admit..."perhaps I need some mental help with this or something..." Ha! Nice try brain... But I played along. "Uh...hmm. Well then...let me see. Get help? What kind?" (4th mental movie starts) Now, normally the answers would have come easy, but given my state of mind and the fact that all my choices would weirdly appear in the form of movie credits made things a tad strange. The credits rolled. Scrolling by at the very top of the list were "All The Popular Anti-Depressants" which were played by their generic characters. Then, "Stand-In Drugs" played by Valium, Percocet, Darvon, Pot, and the Whiskey Brothers. After that scrolled the "Mental Health Hotlines" which were all played by the same "Fat Wanna-Be Do-Gooders With Absolutely No Fucking Life Whatsoever". What a cast. And, oh yeah, listed also was the sound track title named "I Accidentally Shot My Untrainable House-Pissing Rat Dog" which was performed by the band "Yay!" There were a couple more like "Call 911-We're Here To Help" played by "Yeah Right, I'm Not That Frigging Stupid Yet Fool", but I had seen enough. The list was endless and this task had only succeeded in igniting an entirely "new" set of side movies in my poor little already over-amped head. (Christ, this sanity game is hard!)

("Choices You Have, Young Skywalker...") "Huh?" My mind reeled, It clanked and ratcheted like the inner workings of a the town clock tower in a lightning storm. (Hill Valley?) For a second I thought I was lost but then it struck me. Perhaps I needed something new. Something different. Something I hadn't had for a long, long time. Ding! Ding! Ding! Eureka! I had it! What I really needed was pure stranger sex with a total hottie! Yessiree Bob! That's gotta be it! I'll find me a willing and horny green-eyed blond with a puppy-nose, flirty eyes and a delicious smirk dressed up in a cheerleaders outfit (my personal favorite). We would then have a torrid marathon of caveman style lust until I bathed in the glory of her great, steamy hot, face-melting passion juice. I think at this point I was smiling to myself. But of course (you guessed it), there came yet another uninvited side-move roaring in like an X-Wing Fighter. I struggled hard to keep the hot porn sequence with my long-legged fantasy girl (Let's call her Beth) alive and in the forefront, but to no avail. (Damn it all!) Like a massive Drive-In with 30 screens stretched a mile in diameter, thousands of shows and side-bar movies were now underway and my own internal mental reel was stacking up and now spinning out of control. All was lost.

At this point I had at least seven (or more?) living, breathing and very demanding technicolor motion pictures all fighting over the "pixel turf" on my poor little 50 inch mental plasmatic internal brainscreen which also inluded at least one hundred HD picture-in-picture insets in full swing. (Just try topping that shit Circuit City!). All of which were running on top of everything else that was playing around me and thru my dirty little mind. Suddenly a cold rush of fear set in. "Beth! Beth! Don't go towards the light!" My green-eyed blond and puppy-nosed cheerleader had just turned, gave me "the look" (You guys know what I mean) and quickly peeled down her satin panties. She stood up, parted her legs and raised the stretched panties high over her head like a flag and said.."If you want them, come claim them..." (Gulp) I swallowed hard and tried to move but something weird happened. Suddenly, new and uninvited clips from actual theater movies or shows I'd seen in real life began to overlap and push their way in. It seemed they were somehow trying to rescue me or something. Was it possible reality from the silver screen was trying to intervene in my daydream madness? I even began to hear voiceovers, scenes and lines from scripts. No matter how hard I tried to 'use the force", my dreamgirl Beth was being pulled away from me, back into the darkness, out of view and totally against her will. I was powerless to stop it. "Noooooo!!" "Not my baby! Throw me the panties!" And then the voices came....

"On Dasher, On Dancer, On Donner!"...."Something Wicked This Way Comes"...."Damn It Jim, I'm A Surgeon Not A Mechanic!"...."Scotty I Need Warp Five In Two Minutes Or We're All Dead!"...."Every Time You Hear A Bell An Angel Gets Its Wings"....(Sheesh!) "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!"...."Open The Pod Bay Doors Please, Hal"...."Well Do Ya, Punk?" The fight was on. I had made the mistake of falling asleep in a live version of "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" and was being absorbed. In my broken mind it was clear the forces for good were secretely trying to morph me into some sort of carbon-based christian sattellite channel against my will or something. (Fuckers!) My mind quickly retaliated. Physically, all I could do was sit back and watch in fear. My office chair was actually vibrating with kinetic energy. The melee had begun. Blam! Out of nowhere Mr. Spock could be seen putting the Vulcan neck pinch on a stunned and slumping Santa Clause. (Yay!) Then the Stargate opened and in walked Bing Crosby dressed like a priest! My beautiful Beth had somehow fought her way back in, now dressed in a sleek, tight-fitting "Matrix" outfit and was slithering erotically down a dance pole trying to reach me when Bing spotted her and made his move to intercept. He pulled a vial of holy water or something from his Cassock and splashed her with it just as she reached the bottom. Pure bedlam from here on out.

"Ahhhh....I'm melting!....Ahhh....You little brat!...." she screamed while starting to dissolve and while my manhood began to whither. "Save the panties!" I heard myself shout. "Uh....Save the panties!" Then, Conan the Barbarian appeared through a portal charging out from the dunes swinging a giant inkpen toward Bing. Crosby took one look at that shit and booked. (Buh Buh Buh Bye Bing!...) The Stargate roared and bubbled again and everyone in this entire menagerie suddenly stopped dead in their tracks and stared. In walked a two-headed beast, half man and half woman. As it came down the ramp I could make out their faces. It was Celine Dion somehow conjoined to Barry Manilow! They stopped and drew in a large breath and let loose their weapon of song destruction. With frighteningly sickening smiles they sang so high and so obnoxious that the glass around the room actually started shattering. Everyone, including characters I didn't even recognize started puking profusely and diving for cover. All was lost now, it seemed. I picked up Beths drenched panties and stuffed them into my pocket, closed my eyes and began clicking my heels together. It was no good. The State Fair Balloon had already left. I resigned myself to beinig a prisoner in a dark cavern of actors, villains and animated monstrosities, all of whom were at war because of me.

Lets sum up, shall we? So, here I am, thinking of killing myself hopefully "after" having a shuddering mind-altering orgasm with Beth, all during a dream sequence brought to you by (Not Kelloggs) the fires of hell. (Yeah, I know.....Just live with it, k?) I have no real hope for the future and all I hear is goddam Christmas music everywhere I go. All the actual humans I know hate each other and there isn't a cheerleader on the planet that even knows I exist. (Should have done something about that hair long ago, I guess.) Wait, whats that noise? The mega-movies are finally slowing down and stopping, frame by frame! The characters are fading to black. It's over. This daydream is coming to an end. The soft, mellow sound tracks you normally hear walking out of a theater during the credits are now gently playing in the background. (Was that Frodo I saw sailing away?) The ringing in my ears had stopped and the sound of my computers hard drive has taken over. My eyes are opening. What is this place?

In the distance, real footsteps are coming down the stairs headed toward my office.It was my wife of twenty years. I was red-faced and still panting. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket to make certain Beths wet panties didn't show, but there was nothing there. I hadn't met her yet. I swiveled my chair around as she walked in. Still half asleep and rubbing her eyes she asked what I'd been thinking. "Uh..." I could only stare. No words could describe. "Come to bed, warrior man." I pressed the "half-moon" button on my keyboard and followed her up to our bedroom. Just before I drifted off I tried to revisit the 'Insanity Theater" I had just left, but there was only rubble. Simple remnants of memories remained. It occurred to me that instead of trying to remember the dreams you had the night before like most do, perhaps it is a healthy thing to get such things out of the way before we slumber in order to pave the way for tomorrows peace of mind.

After all, life is just like a movie, isn't it? We are all characters in the dreams of another.

MARTACUS